School Project

Home. Dinner: Mac & Cheese for Secondborn, hot dogs for Firstborn and myself, pumpkin pie for both boys. (That's a vegetable, right?) Firstborn is working on a school project. The sweet release of sleep seems ever more distant and mythical, like a magical dream from childhood that can never come to pass in the harsh, adult world. Despair grips me. Will we ever be done? Is there some final end to this torture? When will we brush our teeth? But all is bleakness and dark, and hope is nothing but an illusion to comfort the weak. We will be trapped here in this squamous abyss for all of time, and I know it. There is no Reading Of Books At Bedtime. There is no end to this purgatorial drudgery. Sleep is a myth, free time a nearly-forgotten legend. Secondborn announces that his bottom is "entire poopy"; this seems a fitting metaphor for my existence, but I send him to the bath despite. The need for a page on Caddo pottery binds us like heavy chains, dragging us ineluctably down into the airless, loathsome depths. There is no reprieve. There is no release. I am a parent, now... and always.